


The Things Dick Grayson Lost

by hikuni



Category: Batman Beyond, Batman Beyond 2.0 (Comics), DC Animated Universe
Genre: Age Difference, Dick Grayson is Bad at Feelings, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Slow Burn, Suit Kink, Terry McGinnis Knows What He Wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikuni/pseuds/hikuni
Summary: Dick had braced himself for this. Some quick part of him had prepared for it the moment Terry had opened his eyes. This dance they’d been doing for the past few months had been leading them here. Dick had felt it, ignored it, resisted it, determined to stay firmly in the part of Terry’s life labeled ‘Batman.’ He convinced himself it had been the right thing, the moral thing, keep himself un-entangled in the rest of Terry’s life so that when Terry was outside the suit, he could be a normal college kid with a normal college life and a shot at normal college flings and who knows? Maybe one day, he’d realize he’d rather be Terry McGinnis full-time and he’d give up the mantle for good.





	The Things Dick Grayson Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hi so I started writing this when Batman Beyond 2.0 first came out (before Future's End or the Rebirth reboot) because it was so obvious to me that Dick/Terry needed to happen, and on a whim I’ve decided to finish it. It’s set after the conclusion of Rewired arc but before the Justice Lords arc, and is 100% shameless Dick Grayson/Terry McGinnis indulgence. I don’t know that there are many fans of that to begin with, but if you are one and you’ve found your way here, I really hope you enjoy this.

Dick Grayson was dreaming.

These days he rarely had dreams anymore, but when he did, they were almost always nightmares. Memories came back to haunt him while he slept, all the terrible things he’d seen, all the horrible things he’d done. More than anything, Dick dreamt of all the things he’d lost.

Usually the nightmare was an old one, almost comforting in its familiarity. A circus tent, a flying trapeze. A moment of Dick’s history that even in the land of the sleeping he couldn’t do anything to change. Tonight’s nightmare was a new addition to his rotating showcase of failures. A memory still fresh and all the more painful for it.

Tonight, Dick was on a boat. Dark waves were lashing angrily at its side, salt wind stinging his eye, both forces threatening to overturn the tiny speeder and send him plunging down into the briny water of the bay. There was noise all around him: machine gun fire in the distance, the whirring of a police cruiser above him, an explosion somewhere to Dick’s left.

But the sound amounted to mere white noise for him, like a neighbor’s television heard through the walls. Easy to ignore. He had all of his attention on watching those black, hellish waves. The waves were why he was here. Salty and cold, too cold for anyone to be in that water, but that’s why Dick had this pit in his stomach, because there _was_ someone. A dark shadow of a body lying face down in that unrelenting current that threatened to pull it from the bay and into the open sea. Not moving. Not breathing.

Dick could feel the fear clawing at that pit, feel how it was like a rabid animal trapped in his belly, tearing its way through his lungs so it could grab hold of his throat. “I got you,” Dick heard his voice choke out as he reached down for that too-still figure.

Dick managed to wrap one hand around that shadow’s arm and pulled it closer until he could grab the other. He had to flip him over. Dick knew this. He had to pull Batman onto the speedboat. He knew that, too. But in that moment, he was frozen, because Batman didn’t look like he was breathing, and there was a good chance that he wasn’t. Dick was too late. Dick was too late and that wonderful, precious life encased in that suit was already lost to him forever.

“I got you, Terry,” Dick said in the dream, but it came out like a plea for help. “I…”

 

Dick bolted upright. Disoriented, he looked down at his hands that had just been holding onto Batman’s arms. He searched the floor for the waves, for a body face down in them, but all he saw were the shadows of his bedroom. The dark roiling water had quieted down and solidified into the slate grey walls of his room. The roar of fires raging became the distant hum of hover cars on the freeway a few streets over, the explosions muted down to some dull _thunk_ from somewhere in the building, the ever-present noise that made his rent so cheap.

Dick closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose, tried to get his jaw to unclench. That nightmare shouldn’t have even been a nightmare. He knew how that day had ended. He pulled Terry out of the water, and Terry had still been alive. Yeah, then Terry pulled a disappearing act that probably shaved another few years off of Dick’s life with the stress of not knowing where he was, but Terry had been _alive_ when Dick hoisted him from the sea. And it took a few hours, but Terry had come back home to him.

That memory had no right to be one of the nightmares of Dick’s greatest losses, so why was it? Annoyance was quickly taking the place of the lingering panic from the dream, and Dick realized irritably that there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. A glance at his alarm clock told him there was only a couple of hours until sunrise anyway. With a sigh of resignation, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and forced himself to stand. The bullet near his spine protested the sudden change in position and but he shoved down the pain with a grimace.

Coffee sounded like a good idea – cornflakes an even better one. He could go get the pot started, have some breakfast, scan the newsfeed for anything he missed while he slept. His mind went pleasantly blank with those mundane thoughts, nightmare near forgotten. He’d almost made it to the tile that marked the start of his loft’s modest kitchen when he noticed that distant _thud_ sound he’d heard earlier was louder now, closer than he first thought. Really close, actually. _In his own loft_ close.

Dick whipped around to face the door that connected the half of the loft he lived in to the adjacent gym space. Someone was in his gym.

Someone…

Before he could finish the thought, Dick threw open the door. The instinct to fight gripped him, his muscles awake with purpose. He was sliding behind a stack of crash mats before he even noticed the weight of his escrima sticks in his right hand. For a second, Dick blinked at them, unsure when he had grabbed them. Twenty years ago, the feel of his weapons might have made him feel alive. Now they just reminded him of how little he had left to lose.

He could hear the creaking of trapeze ropes. He paused for a second, listening to them, his still drowsy brain struggling to put everything together. What kind of intruder broke into his gym to use the trapeze? Groggy, the bullet near his spine complaining, the ghost of dark waves still churning in the back of his mind, Dick didn’t feel at all like he’d once been a partner to the world’s greatest detective. Dick didn't feel at all like anything.

Trying to get his brain to wake up with sheer willpower, he leaned out from behind the mats to look. Immediately, his good eye stung from the stark gymnasium lighting but he forced it to stay open. With his eye still adjusting to the light, all he could make out was a shadow flying near the ceiling. An able body with self-assured, maybe overzealous movements.

Maybe Dick couldn’t solve a crime within five minutes of waking up, but trapeze he could practically do in his sleep. It only took a few seconds of watching that figure before Dick recognized those movements and forgot about intruders and instead thought: Too late. If that shadow was trying to set up for a forward over, they were overshooting it. They waited too long on the swing forward – by the time they left the bar, there wouldn’t be enough time or height for their somersault onto the neighboring trapeze. They were going to fall.

Dick opened his mouth to call out a warning, but before he could get any sound out, the figure let go of the swinging trapeze, flipped - too late. They weren’t going to make it. They came out of the somersault with arms outstretched for the next bar, hands clutching at nothing but air. They missed. They fell.

For the second time in the hour, Dick felt fear.

His stomach dropped with the aerialist. He shut his eyes and waited for the sickening thud of a body hitting the ground, but it didn’t come. He should have fallen by now. For a brief moment, Dick thought maybe he’d timed it wrong – but Dick never timed it wrong. Not flying on the trapeze, not flying through Gotham. He opened his good eye to see a body bouncing on the safety net below the swings.

Of course. There was a safety net. _Of course_ there was a safety net. Dick would never run a gym without one.

_Losing it, Grayson._

Fingers still loosely curled around his escrima, Dick made his way towards the false intruder as they climbed out of the net, feet landing on the mats below with the same dull thud Dick had heard from his kitchen.

“Oh, hey Dick!”

Even though he’d been expecting it, prepared for it, at the actual sound of that voice, Dick’s feet stopped. Not ten minutes ago, he’d been holding the near lifeless body that belonged to that voice - but now here the owner was, very much alive, rubbing the back of his neck, mouth curled into that crooked smirk that Dick had grown so accustomed to over the past few months.

Dick exhaled. “Terry.” He wasn’t sure if it was the fluorescent gym lighting or Terry’s smile that now made him want to squint and look away. “What are you doing here? How did you get in this time?”

That smug smirk on Terry’s face only widened. Aimed at the wrong person, that smile would earn the kid a punch in the jaw. Probably already had. “C’mon Dick, you don’t even have a basic security system on the gym doors. You really think a retro padlock could keep me out? You should talk to Max about upgrading your security to, you know, this century.”

Terry’s smile was a thousand-watts, gleaming and challenging. Dick would blame his reaction on the nightmare. The dream had thrown him off, is all. Left him vulnerable to disorientation and bad calls. Hence, the momentary lapse in memory of the safety net. Hence, the feeling welling up in his chest now.

“The padlock is more of a courtesy warning,” he replied at length, willing his voice to steady against the pounding in his ribcage.

“So I see,” Terry grinned, raising an eyebrow and nodding towards the escrima sticks in Dick’s hands. Ah, shit. He had forgotten. Before his cheeks could betray his humiliation, he set the old weapons down on the low bench Terry used to pile all his own stuff on. Terry, out of kindness or ambivalence, took the moment to ignore Dick’s embarrassment as he reached for his gym bag.

“I guess you saw me fail at that forward over, huh?” Terry asked casually as he pulled a towel from his backpack. With his face buried in the terry cloth, he went on, somewhat muffled, “I knew I missed the timing, but I thought I’d just go for it, see what happens.” He popped his head out again and draped the towel around his neck. “Haven’t been able to land that forward over without relying on the servos yet, so-”

Dick held up a hand to silence the younger man. No good could come of him being here this late at night with Terry. Alone. Without the suit and the job and the safe distraction that came with them. “We can talk tricks when the sun’s up. You should go home. You should be asleep right now.”

Terry raised an eyebrow, like he'd just heard a joke that was criminally unfunny. “Uh, are you forgetting what my job is? What kind of hours I work? ‘I am the Night’ and all that?”

Sassy. He was so goddamn sassy. How Bruce had let a kid like Terry put on the suit in the first place…

Dick cleared his throat. “Even vigilantes need sleep, you know.”

“Yeah, and you know what _he’d_ say to that, right?” Terry scrunched up his face into a scowl and in an exaggeratedly low, gravelly voice, added, “Crime doesn’t sleep, so neither should the Batman.”

Then again, Terry’s chronic sassiness was probably the thing Dick liked about him most. He was so much like how Dick had been at that age. If Terry had been around during Dick’s Blüdhaven days, the _damage_ the two of them could have done…

While Dick got nostalgic, Terry started emphasizing his scowl with a twitch in his eye, and against his better judgement, Dick let out a chuckle. That earned him another pleased smile from Terry. _Reckless_ , Dick’s mind warmed him, but ignoring it, he smiled back and reached out to put his hand on Terry’s shoulder. He wasn't thinking when he did it, not really. Only a vague idea of how he wanted to feel Terry’s skin against his fingers floated around in his mind when did it. He already had his hand on Terry's shoulder before he even realized what he'd done, and even then, Dick didn’t think anything except how much better this was than holding the cold carbon fiber of the suit in his dream. Then the moment was over, and Terry flinched and pulled his arm away. Dick frowned. Terry didn’t flinch, unless…

“Terry,” he said, all amusement gone from his voice. “Your shoulder. You dislocated it again?”

Terry shrugged out of Dick’s reach with a frown. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a bruise. It was hours ago, and it wasn’t even a real slip, not like last time. A Joker just got lucky with his grab, is all…”

 _Foolish. Reckless._ “This is why you missed that trick.” Dick had meant it like a question, but it came out like an accusation. Terry didn’t say anything but lowered his gaze to the floor, and that was more than enough admission for Dick. “Your arm gave out and you were losing your grip, but you thought – what? ‘Slag it! Let’s go for it anyway’?”

The tone of Dick’s voice demanded an answer, but Terry offered none.

“You knew you wouldn’t have the strength to land it,” Dick’s words came out slowly, his tongue tasting the anger of each syllable. “Terry, if your arm’s jacked, you have no business being on my trapeze.”

Terry jerked his chin away, barely more than a twitch, but Dick had spent the better part of the last few months learning all the kid’s tells. It was a blaring advertisement that Terry’s next move would be to turn tail and leave. Like hell he’d let him. Dick grabbed Terry’s uninjured arm to keep him there. If Terry wanted to crash and burn, then Dick wanted him to understand that he should do it as far away from Dick as possible.

Terry was trapped in place by – well, nothing, really. He could have easily pulled himself free or turned the grip into a counterattack that left Dick lying on the floor. Dick watched Terry’s body language go from wounded and guilty to angry and defensive, but still he refused to let go. Finally, Terry stood up a little taller, squaring his shoulders and clenching and unclenching his free fist. “Whatever,” he said, probably aiming his tone for nonchalance but landing somewhere haughtier. “Just felt like blowing off steam. Didn’t think you’d get so mad about me practicing your tricks. I’ll get outta your hair now, alright?”

For a moment, Dick saw red. It would have been so easy for him to lash out, to lecture, to yell. It would have been a relief almost, to let his frustration grab Terry by the shoulders and shake him until he understood. How could such a smart kid be so stupid? Didn’t he know how much people cared about him? Couldn’t he see how the people around him didn’t want him to get hurt?

Ever since Terry and Bruce had their falling out, Terry had been running around like a loose cannon, taking hits he could have avoided, missing hits that should have landed. Falling from trapeze tricks. Terry was angry, and anger made him sloppy. It was all Dick could do to try to rein him in, but Terry was only getting worse. Which, of course, Bruce noticed. And Terry knew that Bruce noticed, which only made him angrier and sloppier.

Dick was _trying_. To be a mentor, to be Terry’s back-up, and to do it as differently from Bruce as he could. But if Terry kept pulling stunts like this, like going on patrol without Dick knowing, without Dick there on the monitors to support him, then Terry would end up with a lot more than a bruise on his already bad shoulder.

But Dick didn’t know if he could put any of this into words. And even if he did, would Terry even hear them? Still, Dick had to try. He knew this. He had to try to get through to him, to save him from turning into another Dick, another Babs, another Tim.

Slowly, he loosened his grip and let the rage flow on until it was swept out to sea. Empty now, he felt slightly ashamed of his thoughts. Even if Terry wanted to crash and burn – _especially_ if Terry wanted to crash and burn – then Dick wanted to be near him for it. Needed to be. Needed it so badly because even imagining a life without Terry made him feel like he was the one being pulled down into the black ice waters of Gotham’s bay.

“I worry about you,” Dick said at last, his voice quiet, the anger gone and his chest constricting painfully with the feeling that made his mind scream, _Danger_. “I don’t want you to get hurt. You shouldn’t patrol alone, or I won’t be there if things go sideways.”

Terry didn’t react, his muscles still tense, still in fight or flight mode. His eyes still steadfastly fixed on the floor. Terry was waiting for the other shoe to drop. With Bruce, the other shoe always dropped.

But Dick wasn’t Bruce, so patiently, he kept quiet, softening the pressure of his hand on Terry’s wrist so Terry would know that he could leave if he wanted to.

After a few more moments of silence, Terry finally seemed to accept that there was nothing else coming. No other scoldings or lectures. Terry’s arm relaxed in his grip, and his blue eyes floated up from the floor towards Dick’s face. When he met Dick’s gaze, Terry stayed. Dick smiled – it’s what he had been waiting for, after all. For Terry to look at him. For Terry to see that Dick was here for him, that Dick wasn’t going anywhere.

Finally, when Terry made a motion to pull away from Dick’s hold, Dick let him go. Part of him was relieved – any longer, and Dick probably would have run out of air in his lungs. His now-free hand felt empty without Terry’s arm in it, so he latched it onto his own wrist.

 _Danger_ , his mind warned again. Dick cleared his throat. “Get some rest, Terry,” he managed to say.

Terry slowly nodded, still refusing to let go of Dick’s gaze. The kid’s eyes were so blue. Every time they looked at him like that, as if Dick had all the answers, he felt like he was drowning in that blue. Too much. Dick turned his head just slightly to break the gaze, let his bad eye take the brunt of that stare. It was safer that way.

When Dick thought about this a moment later, he realized how foolish he’d been. Turning away from Terry wasn’t _safer_. It was like turning your back on a predator. Terry didn’t like to be ignored. _Stupid_ , Dick would tell himself. _Careless_.

Because as Dick hid Terry in his blind spot, Terry took the opportunity to snake a hand behind Dick’s neck, to dig his fingers into Dick’s skin, to use that leverage to pull Dick forward. Dick’s muscles snapped to attention and he jerked back, but it wasn’t enough; Terry’s grip was strong and held him there. Alarm sirens were blaring in Dick’s mind – _danger, too close, get away_. Dick ducked his head and tried to face Terry, but before he could, soft lips pressed against the stubble of his lower jaw, hidden from view from his bad eye.

Shit.

Dick jerked away again, with marginally more success this time. He managed to put a few more inches between them. “Terry,” he said, voice strained with warning.

Terry’s eyes narrowed at Dick. “Do I have you figured wrong?” he asked evenly, bringing his thumb to his mouth. Slowly, he dragged his thumb across his lower lip to wipe a spot of saliva away, all the while keeping his ice blue eyes latched onto Dick’s face. When his thumbnail reached the corner of his mouth, he bit down. Dick should have known better than to watch that blatant display. Terry wanted a reaction out of Dick, and he got one. Dick felt himself stiffen in his sweats, and although Terry didn’t spare a glance down, it must have been written all over Dick’s face. Terry grinned wicked. “That’s what I thought.”

“Terry,” Dick tried again, voice betraying him as it caught in his throat and cracked. He swallowed, started over. He had a thousand very real reasons as to why this was a terrible idea. Good reasons, too, meaningful ones, surely, but the one that his mouth clumsily stumbled onto was, “I’m old enough to be your father.” His voice was feeble, all strength he might have had lost to the things Terry’s teeth were doing to his lower lip.

“Yeah, but you’re not my father,” Terry purred, blue eyes flicking down to Dick’s jaw then up again to meet Dick’s gaze straight-on.

Dick swallowed. “Terry, what I mean is-”

But Terry was done with being patient, and in Dick’s moment of hesitation, he made his move again. Terry was shorter than Dick was, but he had the advantage of youth on his side. He was quicker than Dick, hungrier. The grip on Dick’s neck tightened, and then Terry’s mouth was on his jaw again, trailing warm kisses up his jawline until he found Dick’s lips with his own. It took everything in Dick’s willpower to pull away a second time. He wasn’t sure he could do it again a third.

Terry made a frustrated noise and with two hands flat on Dick’s chest, shoved Dick away. “I’m not looking for a father,” Terry snapped, whipping the towel from his shoulders onto the floor. “I _have_ a father.”

Something inside Dick broke a little thinking about how Terry had lost Warren McGinnis. “Terry, that’s not what I meant,” he replied, keeping his voice low and his words soft. Under all Terry’s bravado, under all Terry’s hunger was an ugly black hole. Dick recognized it for what it was because god, how many times had Dick been here in Terry’s position? How many times had he tried to throw himself at Bruce? How many times had that ended in rejection? No, how many times had it _worked_ , only to leave him feeling emptier than before?

But there wasn’t a way Dick could put that into words that he could speak aloud. “I just… I just don’t think it’s appropriate. You’re young, and you don’t know what you’re doing.”

But apparently that wasn’t the right thing to say. At first, hurt blossomed on Terry’s face, but it was quickly replaced with rage. “You’re saying I’m too _young_?” Terry seethed, his hands balling into fists. Terry’s jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck wound tight like steel cables. “You’re saying I’m too _young_ for you to fuck around with, but I’m old enough for you to let me go out there and risk my life every night?”

Dick’s heart sank. Of course that’s how Terry would hear it. That’s how he had heard it when he’d been in Terry’s place. How could he have forgotten? _Stupid. Careless._

“You know what?” Terry spat. “Screw you, Dick. You’re just as bad as Bruce.”

“Terry,” Dick pleaded. But Terry ignored him, slinging his bag over his shoulder and shoving past Dick with a shoulder blow. Dick stumbled and by the time he recovered, Terry was already halfway to the gymnasium doors. Dick thought about calling for him again, thought about calling Terry’s name over and over, letting more desperation seep into his voice each time – but he knew there was no point. Terry wouldn’t stop. When had that ever worked on Dick? Bruce had tried, and Dick had still left Gotham behind.

So Dick stood there silently, motionless, gaze on the floor where Terry had been standing just a moment before. He listened to the sound of Terry’s footsteps get farther away. He heard the groan of the gym doors swing open, and then listened to the hateful creak of them swinging back shut.

 

* * *

 

Evening found Dick at his seat in front of three giant computer screens. It was his own miniature version of the Batcave’s computer. It ran on Bruce’s closed system, actually, linked to the main Batcomputer. Annoying that Bruce could see whatever Dick was up to while on it, but if that was the price Dick had to pay to be Terry’s back-up, then Dick was willing to pay it.

The monitors linked up to the Batsuit’s visual and audio inputs in real-time, let him see whatever Terry saw, hear what Terry heard. Or at least, that’s what they were _supposed_ to do. The screens had stayed dark all day. Maybe Terry hadn’t put on the suit and was actually attending his college lectures. After learning what Terry’s midterm grades were, Dick had some doubts about that theory.

He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, dragging his fingers over his cheeks and lips. Terry was probably staying dark on purpose. That’s what Dick would have done, after all.

He’d been sitting there, staring at dark monitors waiting for them to come online for hours, and now his stomach growled in protest. All he’d had to eat was cereal and leftover Chinese that Terry had brought him the day before, but anything else would have taken too long to prepare. Dick didn’t want to chance being away from the screens for too long, lest Terry call while he was away. If Terry needed Dick, he would be there. He had to be.

His stomach growled again, this time louder and more insistently.

Still.

One minute to go to the kitchen and refill his bowl with cornflakes couldn’t hurt, right? Dick eased himself out of his chair, the bullet lodged in his spine complaining like it always did. Dick put his hand on his back and pressed - more out of habit than it having any real effect on the pain at this point - and made his way to the kitchen.

Dick’s apartment décor was… minimal. Everything in it was functional and humble in appearance – nothing flashy, nothing that might call attention to itself. The only decorations he had up were a few photos on the wall and a poster of the Flying Graysons. A picture of him and Babs in younger days hung in the alcove between the kitchen and his living room. A small school photo of Tim when he was a kid hung next to it. And Dick’s favorite, the newest addition, a photo of Terry making a face at the camera while Ace the hound tried to wriggle out from under Terry’s arm. That one he hadn’t had time to get a frame for, so it was pinned to Dick’s refrigerator where he saw it every day.

Dick paused a moment to look at it. If Terry only knew how much he meant. Bruce had had two years to make Terry feel like he was just Bruce’s replacement, make Terry feel like he himself was replaceable. Dick had had only two months to try to make Terry feel like he _wasn’t_. It hadn’t been enough time.

Dick hadn’t… Dick couldn’t…

An urgent beeping blared from the monitor room.

“Shit,” Dick hissed. The sound made him jump and he dropped his bowl, spilling milk all over the countertop. “Shit,” he repeated. He gave the mess a half-second of his attention, just enough time to decide it was entirely unimportant, and then darted back to his seat. He expected the monitors to be lit up red with the Batsuit’s optic feed, but only a single monitor was on. It wasn’t Terry. The name on the monitor meant Dick was going to answer anyway: COMM. GORDON.

“Babs,” Dick said, answering the line. “What happened?”

“Grayson,” a stoic female voice replied through the speaker. “You don’t know? Where is Batman? Why aren’t you two in communication?”

Babs’s tone said she was not in the mood for games, which meant that something was wrong, and if something was wrong then Terry was in trouble. Images of Terry, broken and beaten and floating in the water flashed through Dick’s mind – but he ignored it. Pushed past it. “Technical difficulties,” he replied, keeping his sentence length to a minimum so Babs wouldn’t hear the lie in his words. “What’s the situation?”

“Fiona Cobblepot, granddaughter of The Penguin’s been in Gotham since Tuesday. I’ve been keeping an eye on her in case she turned out to be anything like her grandfather, but she seemed harmless until this morning. We received word that last night, she had a meeting with a local Jokerz outfit. I let Batman know and he left for their hangout at the harbor. He confirmed that he arrived on location, then went dark. I haven’t heard from him since.” Babs paused. “I was hoping _you_ were still in touch with him. Something happen, Dick?”

Leave it to Babs to play along with a lie until the last moment. “It’s fine,” Dick snapped, not even bothering to hide his irritation. “Batman hasn’t been online since last night. Might be a problem with the suit. You know it’s been acting up since that encounter with Shriek’s sonics two weeks ago.”

“Save it,” Babs replied curtly. “Find your boy. When you do, let me know. I have cruisers waiting near his last known location. Gordon out.”

The line cut and the monitor went dark again, leaving Dick alone with his thoughts. That bit about the suit acting up – that was another lie, of course. Dick _did_ have problems getting the suit’s GPS online after Shriek blasted Terry with his sonics at point-blank range, but in the end, he got it working just fine. For Terry to have been in the suit but to have Dick’s monitors stay dark meant that Terry had purposefully cut the feed to Dick… which meant that Terry was even angrier with Dick than he’d thought. Fantastic.

Dick manually turned on the line to the Batsuit’s radio, but nothing sounded but silence. “Terry,” Dick said softly, working hard to keep his voice steady. “I know you’re mad at me right now, but you have to let me help you. Barbara wants an update.”

Dick waited, eyes shut, counted the seconds. Nothing.

“Terry, the time for messing around is over. Turn your goddamn visuals on and give me an update. I’m serious.”

Still, nothing.

Dick felt the onset of panic creeping up on him again, the same panic that had gripped him last night. The same panic that had pushed Terry away. “Terry, if you don’t give me a location, I’m going to restart the system to activate your GPS. If that signal is going to compromise your position, you’d better speak up now.”

Dick waited a moment, praying to hear Terry’s voice make some smart-ass remark, but the radio rewarded him with only more silence. “Okay then,” Dick murmured. “Here we go.” With a few quick commands, one monitor sprung to life with a map. Dick watched that map reconfigure itself three times until it homed in on a wide swath of docks at the harbor – just where Babs had said Terry had checked in last – but a flashing warning at the corner of the screen told him the GPS was damaged. Dick wouldn’t be able to get a more precise location, but the system was positive that the suit wasn’t moving.

“Goddamnit Terry,” Dick muttered to himself. There were two possibilities to explain why Terry wasn’t moving: he was in stealth, doing a stakeout, or….

Dick pushed the thought aside and tried to override the feedback line, but another warning about damages popped up on screen. “Damnit,” Dick swore, slamming a fist down onto the desk. “Terry, what have you gotten yourself into?”

A voice answered him, but it wasn’t Terry’s. “Wakey wakey, Batman. You don’t want to be late to your own execution, do you?”

Dick’s head snapped up, hand on the table curling back into a fist. The visual feed was still down, but his rebooting the system had worked. The radio was back on.

“Check it, Woof. Batman’s coming to. Told you that shock wouldn’t kill him.”

Dick recognized that voice. _Ghoul_. The guy in the scarecrow get-up that led the most dangerous bunch of Jokerz. Dick’s lip curled. He didn’t like Ghoul. Didn’t like the slightly unhinged way Ghoul operated. Didn’t like that incarceration didn’t bother him. Didn’t like that Ghoul had Terry in a warehouse somewhere. Ghoul was too unpredictable. Too capable.

“C’mon, sleepyhead. Wake up and smell what Ghoul’s bakin.’”

There was a buzzing sound, and then slowly, like eyes opening, the red visuals of the Batsuit lit up Dick’s screens. “Finally,” Dick exhaled. Dick’s good eye darted back and forth, absorbing everything he could see, but it wasn’t the reassuring view he’d allowed himself to hope for. _Foolish._

“Unconscious,” Dick murmured to himself. The suit’s mask was bowed down, its wearer still knocked out from whatever had happened before Dick joined the party. The only visual it was projecting was Terry’s own limp body hanging in the air, suspended a good fifteen feet above the concrete floor below by some confines out of sight.

Ghoul wasn’t in the mask’s field of vision, but Dick heard the Joker’s voice say, “This is taking too long. What’s the fun if he’s not awake for it? Let’s see if another shock wakes him, eh?” A distant clang and buzz announced a generator being turned on.

Dick saw it before he could hear it: a surge of crackling electricity enveloping Terry’s body, stiffening the muscles taught like cords ready to snap. Dick grimaced. He’d been on the receiving end of an electric attack recently – not something he’d wish on anyone. Dick’s computer monitors flashed a blinding white as the electricity shorted out the visual feed, then slowly faded back into red vision as they came back online. Dick shot a glance towards the monitor that was now projecting Terry’s vital signs – not good. Terry’s heartbeat was erratic. A few more shocks and the suit’s absorbent grounding would fry, leaving Terry’s body to take the brunt of the hit. Terry wouldn’t survive it.

“Goddamnit Terry,” Dick growled through gritted teeth, “Don’t you dare die.”

Then quietly, weakly, so soft Dick almost missed it - “Gee, where’s the faith?”

“Terry!” Dick shot out of his seat so quickly, the chair he’d been sitting on knocked over. “Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“I’m peachy,” Terry replied weakly. “Hanging by my wrists in some warehouse, getting electrocuted from some maniac… you know, just a normal Friday night.”

Dick let out a sigh of relief. If the kid was well enough to be making jokes, he was well enough to get himself out of there. “The suit’s systems are shot. GPS says you’re still at the docks, but it can’t pinpoint you.”

“Uh… I can smell the ocean, think I’m still near it.”

“Hey,” Ghoul’s voice shouted, “Batman’s talking to himself. You got something to say, Bats? Why don’t you speak up a little louder, I can’t hear you from down here!”

The visual feed on the monitor shifted as Terry lifted his head. Ghoul’s grey, scarecrow-like face came into view as Terry turned in the Joker’s direction. “I said,” Terry coughed, straining to raise his voice, “that I think you oughta check a calendar, Ghoul. Halloween’s over. Past time to change your wardrobe.”

“Funny guy,” Ghoul spat. The Joker was directly beneath Terry now, holding something just out of Dick’s line of sight. “Think you’re so funny? Well, I’ve got a joke for you, Batman. What to know what the punchline is? You die. How’s that for funny?” From off screen, Dick could hear Woof howling with laughter. “You hungry for another shock, Batman? You know, I used to have a guy for this kind of work, until you got him locked up in Arkham. Not real polite to steal someone else’s toys. Now I have to make do with this hunk of junk.” A clang of what sounded like a steel-toed boot on metal sounded from off-screen.

The feed moved as Terry’s head followed Ghoul. Terry and Dick watched as Ghoul started the old generator – it must have been decades old, left in the warehouse from maybe even Bruce’s days in the suit.

“This old gal still has a lot of juice in her, though. Guess it’s not so bad for being vintage, eh, Batman?” Cackling, Ghoul yanked the pull. The generator thrummed as it turned on, Dick heard the crackle and sizzle of loose electricity.

The visual feed went white again as the suit surged with the shock. This time though, Terry was awake, which meant this time, he could feel it. The sound of Terry’s scream echoed in the monitoring room, felt like it reached inside Dick’s ribcage, grabbed his heart and twisted.

Dick clenched the edge of the desk. He wanted to hurt Ghoul. Not kill him, no, but hurt him. Maybe break his legs. Make sure he’d never walk out of Arkham again. But Dick was ten miles away and nowhere near fighting shape, so he shoved his rage back down and forced himself to look past Ghoul’s nightmarish face, to search for anything indicative of which harbor warehouse Terry was in.

Each rasping inhale of Terry’s labored breathing made that fist on Dick’s heart squeeze. But now wasn’t the time to give in to it or think about it – now was the time to save him. When Terry groaned and pulled against his restraints, there was a flash of faded paint at the outer edges of Terry’s field of vision. Dick had only seen it for a second, but a second was all he’d needed to make out the faded, barely discernible number nineteen painted on the warehouse doors. “Terry, you’re in Warehouse 19. Barbara has a squad near your location. I’m giving her the go ahead to send them in.”

“No!” Terry hissed in a voice low enough that Ghoul or Woof and whoever else was trolling around in that warehouse wouldn’t hear. “They’ve got Cobblepot’s granddaughter hostage. Ghoul needs her for something. You send the police in, and he’ll kill her before they take him.”

Dick grimaced. He’d like to think that the badges under Barbara’s command were more capable than that, but if that’s the call Terry was going with, then so was Dick. “Understood. Then what’s your move?”

Terry didn’t respond, but he did shift his gaze up towards the cables suspending him. They were the same aluminum conductors old power lines used to use, probably the kind Gotham Electric used back the day. It was how Ghoul was shocking him at such a long distance. The visual feed cocked to the side as Terry tilted his head. Dick knew what that meant. _Trust me_ , Terry was saying. _I know what I’m doing_.

“Be careful,” Dick exhaled. The visuals on the monitor bobbed up and down as Terry nodded once.

Dick sat back in his chair, lips pressed against the knuckles of his right hand. The hardest part about being Terry’s second pair of eyes and ears was just that – he was _only_ a second pair of eyes and ears. He could only watch Terry fight, could only watch helplessly as Terry got knocked down, kicked, punched, sliced open and burned alive. Dick could imagine Bruce in this same position, watching Terry impassively, judging him for his failures. But Dick wasn’t like that, Dick couldn’t emotionally detach himself from the man inside the suit, so watching Terry felt a lot like torture.

All Dick could do now was watch as Terry mustered the last of his strength to grab the upper length of the cables that held him and use that grip to pull himself upside down into a freestanding handstand– nice to see Dick’s gymnastic training coming in handy – and with his feet now aimed the ceiling, Terry turned on the jets on the soles of his boots. Terry’s sudden downward momentum worked to break the cables from whatever had bound them to the ceiling.

The cables fell with a loud crash, pinning Wolf under their weight and tripping Ghoul as he tried to move out of the way. Terry would have been seconds from following them in their plummet, except the moment before he would have collided with the ground, the jets on the soles of his boots kicked in, keeping him in place a few feet above the air. Terry took a moment to get adjusted to being right-side up and free again, but he only needed a second before he propelled forward, advancing on Ghoul like a bird of prey running down their dinner.

Ghoul shouted panicked curses as Terry wrapped the cable around the Joker’s neck. The visual feed looked down at Terry’s hands as he wound the cables around his wrist slowly. “You’re not the only one who can play shock therapist,” Terry sneered, voice dripping with something Dick thought sounded a lot like hatred.

At that instant, Dick understood Terry’s plan.

“Terry,” Dick urged, “your suit was offline for a while and it took some bad hits from that generator, it might not be able to handle that kind of-”

But Terry wasn’t listening. Either that, or he was ignoring Dick on purpose. Dick watched in horror as Terry activated the suit’s own electrical discharge. A blinking warning in the corner of Dick’s monitor told him that the suit’s normal taser levels had been overridden by Terry’s command to near-fatal voltage.

The last thing Dick heard before the feeds went dark was Ghoul shrieking in agony while Terry laughed.

 

* * *

 

“You want to explain what’s going on, Dick?” Barbara asked, her voice neither sympathetic nor cruel. Barbara was good at staying neutral when it came to Terry. Somehow, that had never been very comforting.

The two of them were standing in Dick’s living room, watching the unconscious figure they’d laid down on Dick’s sofa take short, shallow breaths. Barbara’s two trusted uniforms who’d smuggled the unconscious Batman out of the crime scene and into Dick’s building were outside his front door, waiting and on alert.

When Dick didn’t say anything, Barbara went on, “He did a good job today, saving the Cobblepot girl and knocking out the Jokerz for us. When he has wins like that, I come in for the cleanup, and he’s usually still _conscious_.”

Dick clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jaw twitching from the strain. “I know.”

“So,” Babs went on, “You want to tell me why, this time, he fried the suit and nearly killed himself to take down some lowly _Jokerz_?”

Without unclenching his jaw, Dick gritted out, “Barbara…”

When Babs spoke next, her words were softer, gentler. “You’re not the only one who cares about this boy, Dick.” She reached out to touch Dick’s forearm with her fingertips. “What’s going on?”

Dick sighed, the fight leaving his body with his exhale. He was so tired. He was so tired of these games this family had to play. He turned his head a little, put Barbara firmly in his blind spot. Without being able to see her reaction, maybe this would be a little easier. “We had… a disagreement.”

Babs was silent for a moment. “You had an disagreement,” she repeated, drawing the words out slowly. “Okay. Can you fix it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’d better try. He’s a good kid. He deserves better than what Bruce has been giving him.”

Dick’s lips twitched into a snarl before he could stop himself. “I know that.”

“Does _he_ know that?” Babs withdrew her hand and crossed her arms over her chest. “All this time you’ve spent with him, have you even once told him that?”

“It’s complicated,” Dick said haltingly.

Babs sighed. Her disappointment never failed to punch Dick in the gut. “So no, then. Tell me – how is that any better than Bruce?”

“Because I care about him!” Dick shouted, and Babs raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t give a damn about Batman or his legacy. I’m here for _Terry_. I’m always going to be here for _Terry_ , suit or no suit. That’s more than Bruce ever gave any of us.”

Barbara was silent for a moment, casting her gaze on Terry’s resting figure. He was still in the suit, mask on, optics dark. If it weren’t for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, it might have been just another of Bruce’s empty suits.

“None of that matters unless he knows,” Babs sighed at last. “Stop being so stubborn and really talk to him, Dick. Call me when he wakes up.” With that, without so much as a second glance at Dick or Terry, she turned on her heel and strode across the room. Dick didn’t bother to follow her. She could let herself out. He could hear the low sound of voices through the door, then silence.

Babs was right, of course. Babs was always right. With a groan, Dick ran his hands through his hair, gripping at the strands like they were the last bits of his sanity escaping him. He had _meant_ to tell Terry. He had. Every day they spent together, Dick had meant to tell Terry – but how should that conversation have started? Casually over dinner, or maybe in the middle of trapeze practice? Dick could just lean back and say, ‘Hey, so I know Bruce put you in this suit, and I know it’s no use trying to talk you out of it, so I just want you to know that I care about you and I’m here for you and even if you give up being Batman, we all support you and I want you to remain a part of my life?’ Yeah, _sure_.

Dick had been on his way to figuring it out. He’d been on his way to finding the right way to say it – with hopefully, a lot less words involved. But then they had _kissed_ , and… and Dick was afraid. “I’ve already lost so much,” he murmured, sitting down on the edge of the couch, his lower back just barely touching Terry’s still shoulder. “I can’t lose you too.”

“Aw, that’s real sweet, Dick.”

Dick nearly jumped. He leapt out of his seat and whipped around to see Terry struggling to sit upright.

“Morning,” Terry groaned, pushing himself up against the armrest.

“You’re awake,” Dick said breathlessly.

“Uh, yeah,” Terry laughed weakly, “Thought we’d established that.”

Dick put a hand on Terry’s chest to stop him from moving. He opened his mouth to try to say something to that effect, but no words came out. Terry raised an eyebrow beneath the mask and looked down at the hand splayed out on his chest, then brought his gaze, slowly, deliberately, back up to Dick’s face.

“I just – I was worried… You really took a hit there, and…”

“Oh, would you shut up already?” Terry growled as he grabbed Dick’s wrist to pull Dick down on top of him.

Dick had braced himself for this. Some quick part of him had prepared for it the moment Terry had opened his eyes. This dance they’d been doing for the past few months had been leading them here. Dick had felt it, ignored it, resisted it, determined to stay firmly in the part of Terry’s life labeled ‘Batman.’ He convinced himself it had been the right thing, the moral thing, keep himself un-entangled in the rest of Terry’s life so that when Terry was outside the suit, he could be a normal college kid with a normal college life and a shot at normal college flings and who knows? Maybe one day, he’d realize he’d rather be Terry McGinnis full-time and he’d give up the mantle for good.

But then. Even as half of him had been hoping for that, then there was the other half, indulging in the dance. There were the gymnastic lessons that started out under that Batman label but quickly moved to some in-between. Because, honestly, when would Terry ever really need to use a triple handspring in combat? And there were the dinners together – usually at the loft, when Terry showed up with take-out after class, sometimes at the diner at the end of Dick’s block. Before the wiser half of him realized it, Dick found himself in a grey area, part of Batman’s life, part of Terry’s life, exactly where he told himself he wouldn’t be.

Dick was tired of resisting. He was tired of buying into some moral high ground that deep down he didn’t really believe in. If he was being honest – really, excruciatingly, _painfully_ honest – he’d resisted because he’d been afraid. The last time he let himself be this vulnerable with someone, he’d lost her and she married someone else. Never again, he’d thought. _Foolish_ , his mind conceded.

With a deep breath in, Dick let himself be pulled down, hesitant now only because he didn’t want to put his weight on Terry’s body, even though that seemed to be what Terry wanted. Who knew what bones were fractured or what kind of bruising and burns he had? But Terry’s grip was insistent, and the suit’s servos made it stronger – more than Dick was able to resist.

“I heard what you said to the Commissioner,” Terry murmured, reaching up to curl his finger in Dick’s greying hair. Dick all but leaned into the touch. Terry went on, the hard edge of their last argument vanished from his tone. “I meant it. That really is sweet of you to say.”

Dick felt embarrassment burn across his cheeks. Of _course_ Terry had heard Dick’s outburst – it had been loud enough to make even Babs take a step back, after all. Well – that was one way to solve his problem. Just get the kid beat up to the point of near-death, then confess your feelings about him while you think he’s knocked out _. Of course._ Why didn’t he think of that sooner?

Even as he felt a wry smile play out across his face (which got him another raised eyebrow from Terry), Dick felt calm. The roiling waters inside him suddenly went still. _This is how it should be._ “I’m not just saying it, Terry.” Dick locked his gaze onto the white lenses of the mask, Terry’s own eyes unreadable from behind them.

“Hmm,” Terry hummed, his mouth curling into a smirk as he tugged at the hairs of the back of Dick’s neck. “Then show me.”

Even through the armor, Dick could feel Terry’s heartbeat pounding in his chest. Dick knew what Terry was really asking for – hell, _begging_ for. Dick could hear the plea beneath Terry’s (admittedly successful) attempt at seduction, he could hear the, _Please, tell me you care about me the way I think you do. Please, show me I’m not alone in this._

Dick took a deep breath.

It was like taking a dive on the flying trapeze. No matter how many times you’ve done it, there’s a moment when you leap for the bar and your feet leave solid ground, a moment where you’re suspended in the air with gravity working against you, a moment where you realize how far you have to fall.

That’s what kissing Terry was like.

Freefalling.

The original Batman cowl had left Bruce’s mouth exposed – a design choice that Dick had appreciated back in the day - but the newer version Terry wore came all the way up to the inside of the wearer’s lips. At first it was like kissing a bulletproof vest, but then Terry opened his mouth a little wider to let Dick’s tongue slip inside and inside was wet, hot, warm, alive.

Dick caught that seam where Batman became Terry in his teeth. _You’re not alone,_ he tried to say.

Terry half-gasped, half-whimpered, and Dick felt like Terry heard it.

He brought a hand to cradle Terry’s face, to rub his thumb against the hard line of his cheekbone made sharper by the mask’s design. He did it without letting up the kiss, chasing Terry’s breath to keep it for his own. There were so many things he wanted to say aloud, so many things he knew Terry should hear. _You are not replaceable. You are something precious. You make us all so proud._ But what came out instead was, “Terry, you mean so much to me.”

Terry made the soft whimpering sound again that almost turned into Dick’s name.

“You’re the best thing to happen to this city,” Dick breathed, pressing his cheek against Terry’s. _You’re the best thing to happen to me._

“Dick,” Terry whined again, voice pleading for _something_.

All the things Dick had been unable to say threatened to pour out of him at once, the dam broken. “So don’t – don’t do this to me,” he said with effort, the words heavy on his tongue as he tried steel himself against that flood. He pulled his face away so that he could rest his forehead against Terry’s. At the corner of his vision, he could see the eyes of the mask looming up at him, huge and all white. Usually, those made Terry look like a demon out of hell, terrifying and powerful, but now they just made him look so vulnerable. “All it takes is one careless mistake, and what happened to me could happen to you.” _Or worse._ “So don’t do this to me. Don’t make me lose you.”

Terry took in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”

Dick knew the name of the tight feeling in his chest, the clenched fist in his ribcage that squeezed so hard it felt like he might never breathe again. He’d known it for a while, even if he hadn’t admitted it. He pressed his lips against the mask’s temple. “I never want to see you hurt.”

Terry didn’t say anything, but he ran his hands up Dick’s spine, spread them out on the planes of Dick’s back, then dug his fingertips into Dick’s shoulder blades with an urgency that nearly hurt. Terry kissed him like he was starving and pushed his hips up into Dick’s, grinding against him hard and nasty, sharpening that tight feeling in Dick’s chest into something that stung electric.

“Terry,” Dick warned, voice caught between want and caution.

Terry’s answer was to drive his hips up one more time.

Dick should have protested. Post-Jokerz fight was not the time to be messing around, but the mix of hard suit beneath his thighs and wet tongue against his jaw was rapidly overriding any of Dick’s reservations.

Dick let more of his weight drop onto Terry, freeing one arm to snake down Terry’s side, running his hand over the subtle dips of the suit’s light armor plating. He snaked one hand below Terry’s hips to grab a hold of his ass. The armor was firm, but muscle beneath was supple between his fingers.

“Fuck,” Terry hissed, keening into the palm of Dick’s hand.

Dick smiled as he kissed the corner of Terry’s mouth, down to his jawline, where the suit was hard and cold beneath his lips, then back again to taste Terry’s tongue. Little sounds kept choking out of him, halfway between moans and gasps for air, the little sounds of Terry losing it.

Dick let go of Terry’s ass and used his arms to push himself upright. With the weight of Dick’s chest gone, Terry tossed his head back and Dick watched the way his chest heaved, the red bat logo pitching up before shuddering back down. Some part of Dick’s brain was sounding warning sirens. _Slow down. Terry could be hurt._ _This could be making it worse._

“Terry, if you want to stop…”

From below him, Terry made an aggravated choking noise and jerked his head up so he could glare at Dick. When their eyes met, Terry pushed his way up to sitting, crowding into Dick’s space, their chests nearly pressed against each other. With a snarl, he grabbed Dick by the back of the head and brought their foreheads crashing together. “Dick, would you _please_ shut up and _fuck_ me already?”

It felt like Dick’s brain short-circuited. Yeah, sure, maybe he’d known that this was where the night was going, but to hear Terry say it like _that_ , halfway between a beg and a threat, Dick felt himself instantly get hard. Terry gave him no time to gather his wits before he was kissing him again, frustrated, sloppily, like if he could strangle Dick with his kiss, he would.

Apparently, Dick going along with the kiss was still not enough, because Terry shifted beneath him, untangling their hips and legs. Almost angrily, Terry pushed Dick backwards and Dick let him, let Terry take the lead because his brain was still lagging a few moments behind. He let himself be shoved against the couch until his back was pressing against the armrest. There was some complaint from the bullet that made its home there, but it was easy to ignore when Terry’s hands ran down Dick’s chest, down his abs, down the inside of his thigh.

A soft, low moan left Dick as Terry’s fingers traced the muscles of his inner thigh, and Terry’s mask smirked. Even through the mask, that smirk was still aggravating. Aggravating, kind of endearing, and with Terry’s hand running up his thigh and ghosting over his crotch, really fucking sexy.

“Get over here,” Dick rumbled, grabbing Terry by the waist and pulling him to sit on his lap. Terry chuckled, a little too pleased with himself, but Dick was willing to let that slide because his cock was all the way at attention now, trapped between his thigh and Terry’s.

Terry’s smirk stayed plastered on his face as he drove his weight down onto Dick’s thigh, grinding against Dick’s cock in a way that made Dick grit his teeth and grind back. But as good as Terry looked in all black, Dick needed more, needed to touch skin, to actually feel _Terry_. Far past the point of trying to tone down his lust, Dick sat up enough so he could dig his fingertips into the edges of the mask. He yanked it up just enough to expose just the bottom of Terry’s neck, and targeted the smooth curve of where neck met shoulder. Dick exhaled heavily onto Terry’s pale skin, took a moment to savor the sight of it, then sunk his teeth down.

“Ah,” Terry’s voice hitched.

Terry’s skin was almost fever-hot beneath his tongue. Dick hummed approval and Terry whined back, stretching his head away to give Dick more canvas to work with. Dick held him there between his teeth, darted his tongue out to lick the salt-sweat off his skin. He relished in the _sounds_ Terry made. Shaky breaths and quiet gasps and low moans that seemed like they were being pulled out of him rather than given willingly.

Dick listened to Terry’s breathing go ragged and stutter from the things he was doing to Terry’s neck with his mouth. Still, Dick wanted more. He wanted to hear Terry break. He slid a hand down, dragging it unhurriedly over Terry’s hipbone, over the curve of his ass, then down, below, between, pressing against the suit in just the right spot.

Terry gasped at the suggestion of a finger on that spot, and wrapped his arms around Dick’s shoulders, pulling their bodies together, belly-to-belly. Dick wondered what it felt like to be erect in the suit, hard-on pressing against the unrelenting armor, nowhere to go, no friction to be had, no release to be gained. Dick would have been lying if he said the thought didn’t turn him on.

He kept Terry there, applying more pressure where he held his finger, readjusting until the suit gave and he knew Terry could feel his fingertip pressed up against that tenderness. He teased it there probably longer than was fair, so he was unsurprised when Terry finally gasped out, “ _Dick_.”

Dick made a noise like “hmm,” and continued sucking on Terry’s neck. Dick could have kept at this for hours, teasing Terry, giving him just enough to keep him on the edge, muscles tensed and cock begging for release, just so Dick could keep listening to the way Terry’s voice got more and more desperate choked around Dick’s name.

Still. The way Terry was trembling and moaning and pawing at him feverishly wasn’t making him any _less_ eager. So acquiescing at last, he pushed the mask up a little further, following the edges of it with his lips. Up, up over the thick cords of Terry’s neck, up to his jaw, up to nibble at Terry’s earlobe. Terry’s pleading broke off into panting, so Dick kept him there for a moment longer, mask skewed across Terry’s face so all Dick could see was that perfect jawline and the start of jet black hair.

“ _Dick_ ,” Terry gritted again, but Dick wasn’t entirely sure Terry was saying his name.

With one last kiss to Terry’s jaw, Dick tugged the mask all the way off. Terry let out a breath like he’d been holding it forever, eyes shut, cheeks flushed and hair sticking to his forehead. When Terry finally opened his eyes, Dick could see his pupils dilate as they focused on his face. Terry’s eyes had looked at Dick a lot of ways, but this was the first time Dick had ever seen the way they burned slate-grey with want.

“If you don’t get this suit off me in the next sixty seconds,” Terry grated slowly, “I swear, I’m blowing it in here and trust me, neither of us wants that.”

“Okay,” Dick conceded, doing his best not to laugh.

As Terry inhaled, he wound his hand up to the nape of Terry’s neck, feeling for the tiny tactile button that would release Terry from the prison the suit had become. When he found and pressed it, there was a hiss as the current that held the suit rigid shut down, and the light armor went as soft and as limp as fabric.

Dick grabbed one now-loose shoulder of suit and pulled it down. He wanted to stop to kiss the spot where Terry’s collarbone met his shoulder, but pausing would probably only make Terry mad, so he resisted, continued with the other until the suit hung around Terry’s waist like a sweater.

“C’mon,” Terry said when Dick failed to advance past that, but Dick was ignoring him.

All of Dick’s attention was fixated on Terry’s right side, where muscle met ribcage. Terry’s skin was covered in an angry burn the size of Dick’s hand.

“Terry,” Dick said quietly. “We have to stop.”

Terry glanced down at what Dick was looking off and made a _tsk_ noise from the corner of his mouth. “I’m fine. That’s what, first degree at worst?”

Dick looked up to see the desperation in Terry’s eyes, begging Dick to overlook it. He felt for Terry, he really did, but every ounce of his rational self was warning him to stop. He searched for the right words to express this, then gave up and settled for the obvious. “You’re hurt,” he said flatly.

Terry squeezed his eyes shut, but his expression was one of frustration, not the same look of pain he’d come back wearing more and more often after a night in the suit. Dick looked from Terry’s face to the burn again, and then – with the suit loose like cotton, he could now see the tent in the suit’s leggings from where Terry’s hard cock stood rapt and begging for attention.

Dick felt Terry watching him, and he knew that if he looked up at that moment, all hope for playing the role of the decent, sensible adult in charge would disappear. But what else could he do? He had to look. Slowly, reluctantly, he brought his gaze to meet Terry, and something a little triumphant shone in the slate blue eyes that met his.

“So I got a little fried, that’s the worst of it. I swear. You can check the rest of me if you need to,” Terry said, his tone taunting, his thumbs hooked into the waist of the suit like an offer. When Dick didn’t move to take him up on it, Terry went for the kill. “ _Please_ , Nightwing.”

 _Reckless_ , Dick’s mind beat, but it was the last he’d hear from it for a while. Dick all but lunged for Terry’s shoulder, brought his teeth on that same spot on the collarbone he’d resisted before, and ripped the suit down Terry’s thighs. There was some scrambling to get it all the way off, soon joined by Dick’s shirt in a heap on the floor. With one hand on Terry’s uninjured side, Dick brought his other hand in to close around Terry’s cock. He heard Terry’s breath hitch in his ear, but he wanted something better than that sound, so he slid his hand up the shaft to press a thumb against that velvety soft spot at the bottom of Terry’s cockhead.

“Stop, stop, wait,” Terry panted as Dick began to forcefully jerk him. “I – I wasn’t kidding earlier, I was – I _am_ too close.” Dick paused to look at him, but those blue eyes were averted and there was a hint of pink tinged on his cheeks. “I don’t want to lose it yet,” he added in a mumble.

Dick felt his own age again, but less in the usual tired sense that he was getting older, and more in a way that made him grateful that he wasn’t twenty and still blowing his load at the slightest encouragement. “Sorry,” he said, gently releasing his grip on Terry’s hard-on. “What do you want me to do?”

Terry’s eyes flicked up at him. “Fuck me.”

Dick’s own cock thumped against his thigh. “Are you sure?” he heard his mouth say.

“Am I sure that I want your dick in my ass? Yes. Was sure of it ten minutes ago, too. Fuck me.” Terry exhaled, and when he inhaled again, it was with a quiet, breathy, “ _Please_.”

Dick swallowed, but his throat was dry. The bullet in his back was raising its usual objections, but what felt like an impossibly hard erection made the stronger argument. “Okay.”

Terry nodded as if to close the deal.

Dick stood up, which took considerable effort with how heavy his reluctance to leave that couch weighed. No part of him wanted to leave behind that space where he had just been holding a feverish, achingly hard dick in his hand. “Can you – wait a minute? I have to-” but Dick’s voice stopped working there, because saying aloud, ‘go grab lube from my room so I can fuck your tight, unprepped ass’ was a task insurmountable.

Terry made a grunt of approval and stretched out on Dick’s couch languidly, entirely at home without clothes – or at least, entirely at home at putting on a show for Dick. He stood there for a moment taking in Terry’s naked body on his couch. He’d seen Terry mostly nude before, he’d touched a wide percentage of that body applying dressings or ice, some stitches, but he’d never let himself really _look_ at it before. He’d serviced Terry’s body like a mechanic, putting it back together after a fight but he’d never left himself enjoy it. That had been too dangerous, and so it was forbidden. But now, now that he was done pretending and resisting, now that he was accepting, now he could. Now he could look because Terry was putting it on display. Like all capes, Terry looked like he’d been cut from stone, but Dick still thought there was no comparison, there was no one else he could think of that looked _this_ good. His long legs, his thick chest, his cock, slim but long, obscenely dark against the rest of him, precum dripping down his thigh – Dick would probably never be able to use his sofa again without getting hard.

Still – necessities. He forced himself to turn on his heel and head down the hallway to his bedroom. Dick’s brain took the opportunity away from Terry to turn back on and repeat, _Reckless_. _You’re losing it, Grayson_ , as he rummaged through his nightstand for the bottle of lube he’d kept there. _You were supposed to be strong enough to resist_ , his mind chided. Dick felt clumsy then, things kept slipping out of his grasp and he knocked over the alarm clock on the tabletop. He had to stop to see if his hands were shaking. They weren’t, it was just his heart pounding in his chest that seemed to make his vision quake.

Dick made his way back towards the warm lamp light of his living room, taking it slow, deliberately placing one foot in front of the other because he needed to buy time to steel himself. _Go slow. He’s hurt. Maybe more hurt than what you can see. He wants this, so give it to him, but go_ slow _._

With a deep breath and sufficiently satisfied that he wouldn’t lose his composure, Dick took that last step forward and rounded the corner, and all of his pep talk instantly lost all effect.

Terry’s eyes were shut and his jaw was just slightly ajar. His knees were pulled up to his chest, his left hand holding the back of one thigh while his right arm hooked under it, two knuckles deep into his own ass. He worked his fingers in and out in slight, subtle movements. If Dick didn’t have a fantastic view of just how deep Terry had his fingers in, he probably wouldn’t have known they were moving at all. After a beautifully long minute of those tiny thrusts, Terry moved to bring his ring finger closer, tentatively poking at the tight ring of muscle there, testing, cautious. Terry brought his unoccupied hand up to his mouth to press his wrist against his lips to stifle a sound as he slipped that third finger in.

Maybe Dick let a noise escape him then, because suddenly Terry’s eyes snapped opened and looked in Dick’s direction. “Ah,” he said when he took in Dick standing there, leering like a voyeur. “You got it?”

Dick nodded dumbly.

Terry flipped over onto his side towards Dick, his knees still tucked in against his chest, his one hand still near his mouth but the angle had disappeared the other from view. “If you’re waiting for an invitation…” he said, his tone meant to be teasing and sharp, but it came out breathy and ungrounded.

Dick’s feet took him towards Terry, who was curled into what had to be the lewdest version of the fetal position he’d ever seen. Terry seemed almost defenseless then, but the twitching movement of Terry’s right arm that snaked out of view, back and below, betrayed him. Dick had thought it was cute how Terry had been so close to cumming, but now as his cock swelled with each of his heartbeats he realized he might be in some danger himself. He tried to make himself think trapeze tricks, something neutral, something that was not about how sexy Terry was finger-fucking himself on Dick’s couch.

Not at all certain that he’d be able to last more than a minute fucking into the hole Terry’s fingers were, Dick reached down and pulled Terry’s knees apart. The sight of Terry’s cock hanging there, so swollen and dark and heavy made it seem like Dick might never go soft again.

“How…?” Dick asked, his voice giving out as his throat went dry.

“How?” Terry asked, begrudgingly opening his eyes again. With a deliberate smirk, he added, “Like, how does this work? …Or how do I want it?” His bicep stopped flexing, and Terry’s right hand reappeared again. “I don’t care. However you want.”

Terry was trying so hard to be nonchalant, but there was an undertone to his words, a needy whine. Maybe Dick shouldn’t have found Terry’s desperate need to please him cute, but he did. He would have preferred some input from Terry to know he’d be comfortable, but, well, if Terry wanted to be _taken_ , then Dick would _take_. He reached for Terry’s right hand and ran his fingers over the three that had just been in him, marveling at them, and only came back to the current moment when Terry let out a low moan. He motioned for Terry’s other hand which was then given willingly, and he pulled Terry up onto his knees, cock hanging there, so close Dick could have grabbed both of their erections in one hand, but he ignored it. Then gently, careful of the red skin on Terry’s right side, Dick guided Terry until he was turned around, stomach pressed against the backrest of the couch.

“Nice,” Terry said, trying so hard to stay cocky. “From behind? Dirty.”

 _Adorable_ , Dick thought, followed by, _Fuck_ , because Terry was folding his arms on the top of couch and resting his cheek on them, arching his back to present his ass like it was dessert served up to Dick on a platter.

Dick spread lube onto his right hand, then with his left, he gingerly reached out for the warm flesh of Terry’s ass. It was obviously hard muscle like the rest of him, but it was soft and relaxed in his hand. With another dry swallow, Dick used his thumb to pull one cheek apart from the other, revealing a twitching, just barely ready asshole waiting for him. With his lubed hand, Dick worked his way there to that delicate skin which twitched once he brushed his thumb against it. What had Terry been using to get his fingers in? His own spit? God – his precum? Dick’s erection ached at imagining it, imagining Terry watching Dick leave for the bedroom and sliding his hand down to his ass. Slipping that first finger in with the sight of Dick’s retreating back enough to open him up.

Well, now it was Dick’s turn. He slipped one knuckle of his index finger in to see how loose Terry had managed to get himself, and that elicited a gasp from  Terry, who Dick suddenly realized had been finally, blissfully silent. _Easy_ , Dick thought and pulled it out, only to go back in with two. His hands were larger than Terry’s, his fingers thicker and calloused from years of being wrapped around nightsticks, trapeze bars, grappling hooks - and maybe it was that size difference that now had Terry trembling beneath him. Gingerly, Dick scissored his fingers apart, testing.

“Slag it,” Terry cursed from under him, arching his back out like a cat hissing. “Raincheck on that.”

“Does it hurt?” Dick asked, worriedly.

“Nope. Opposite. I’m gonna cum.”

Dick’s throat seemed to go even drier. “Oh.”

Terry groaned and balled one of his fists so tight the knuckles went white, leaned his forehead harder into his arm. “I’m not gonna break, so _please_ just get on with it.”

“Okay,” Dick’s mouth said, but he wasn’t sure any sound came out. He pulled his fingers back out, tugged the waist of his pants down to his thighs and smeared the rest of the lube on his cock, gone veiny and dark with eagerness for the task ahead.

He leaned forward as he guided his cock down, putting his weight onto his left hand that he positioned near Terry’s head. As his tip just barely ghosted against Terry’s ass, Dick turned to kiss the side of Terry’s head, just above his ear. “Okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” Terry hissed.

So Dick pressed in. At first, there was nothing but pressure, resistance and then, suddenly _give_. He slipped in, one glorious velvet centimeter at a time. Terry went from rigid to jelly and back again underneath him, a whine building in Terry’s throat that cut off in a gasp.

Terry’s neck went stiff as he pressed his head harder into the crook of his forearm. “Fuuuuuck,” he hissed between what sounded like clenched teeth, his voice a little muffled. “Yes. Please. Yes.”

The part of Dick’s brain that was normally on high alert for anything that threatened danger was eerily quiet. Terry was saying yes, he wanted this, and Dick was more than willing to give it.

He pressed in until the length where he always stopped - it was more than enough for him, and any more and he’d be afraid of hurting his partner. But Terry was not like any of Dick’s other partners. When Terry seemed to realize Dick was hesitating, he shoved his hips back violently. Dick gasped – that jerking movement buried his cock in Terry to the hilt, his balls pinned almost painfully against Terry’s thigh.

“Yessss,” Terry hissed again, arching his ass out, further pushing Dick into him.

It felt good. It felt so fucking good. His entire dick buried in the hot, slick tightness felt better than sex should have any right to feel. Dick felt some levy break, and before his cautious mind could protest he was pulling out of Terry nearly completely just so ram himself all the way in again.

Terry made some sounds that might have been words, but might also have been nonsense. They petered out when Dick slammed into him again.

“Terry,” Dick breathed out, as he reached to brush a hand against the part of Terry’s cheek he could see. Terry leaned into the touch, turning with it so now Dick could see the wrecked expression on his face.

Dick repeated his name as he dragged his hips up, dragging his cock out so leisurely, drawing his touch from Terry’s cheek to his ear and into his black, black hair. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of strands, and Terry’s head came up off his arms easily. “Good?” he asked, driving his hips down again.

A smirk tried to tug at the corner of Terry’s lips, but its effect was lessened because it was punctuated with gasps each time Dick drove his cock into him. Dick watched as Terry’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, searching for his voice so he could answer, “If you – if you even grazed my dick right now I’d cum, so yes, it’s _good_.”

Dick fucked him three more times, nasty and quick, his balls slapping against Terry’s skin on every thrust in and that sure wiped the smirk away. “Do you want me to do that? Do you – do you want to now?”

Terry didn’t answer at first, his breathing shallow and in time with every sharp thrust of Dick’s hips. Dick slowed down his thrusts until they were smooth rolls, let Terry catch his breath a little. Dick looked down at where his cock was swallowed up, and then, below that, he got an occasional glimpse of Terry’s hard-on, turned an almost painful shade of purple with disuse. With each thrust forward, Terry’s dick bounced against the smooth leather of the couch. He was sure that was maddening – almost enough friction to get there, but not quite, not enough pressure or friction to grant him any sort of release. Dick kept up that pace – steady, but unforgiving.

“Yes,” Terry whimpered at last, eyes rolling up at Dick, his neck crooked at the severe angle Dick’s hold on his hair left it at. “Please.”

That final please was so wracked with the desperate need to cum that Dick didn’t think he’d last to hear another one. He let go of Terry’s hair and traded that grip for a hold of Terry’s hips. He pulled Terry’s ass up, closer, higher still. Satisfied the angle was good, he paused for a moment and pulled out. Terry whimpered at the sensation, but Dick guided himself back in, and with this leverage his hips were like a piston, driving down and down and down.

Terry cried out, but Dick kept up the unrelenting pace until he could feel his own orgasm building. He could afford to wait, though – there were more important things. He released one of the hands on Terry’s hips to slide down, across the solid slate of Terry’s lower abdomen, into the soft hair, and then a slow crawl up the shaft of Terry’s dick. He went languidly, enjoying running his thumb over the thick veins that worked their way up Terry’s slender but long cock. When he reached the tip, he rested his thumb against the slit of Terry’s cock head and squeezed. Precum was leaking out with reckless abandon and Terry nearly sobbed beneath him.

“Terry,” Dick said his name again like a prayer, knowing it didn’t even come close to expressing just how awed he was from the feeling of being inside him.

Dick closed his fingers and jerked him hard, once, twice, and on the third upstroke, Terry was panting beneath him until his voice cut out, his mouth a perfect pantomime of the sound that couldn’t escape him. Terry’s ass spasmed so sweetly around Dick’s cock as he shot sticky streams of cum onto the couch cushions.

Dick kept jerking off Terry’s cock until those streams turned into a dribble into nothing, and still he kept going. Terry’s cock had been so patient, begging for this for so long - and Dick wanted to milk it until the sensation bordered on too much. It would have been nice to keep Terry here forever, fucking the aftershocks of Terry’s orgasm until Terry couldn’t form thoughts anymore, but his own orgasm wasn’t far behind, not with Terry’s ass still squeezing around his cock so tight and hot and perfect, and he came before he could tell himself to pull out, white blinding pleasure washing over him and wiping out everything else.

Terry moaned beneath him, admirably riding it with him until finally he couldn’t anymore. Knees shaking, he scrambled to get away from Dick’s too-much, pulling away until Dick’s cock slipped out. Terry pressed his chest into the couch cushions and buried his face into the crook of his left arm.

Dick took in the sight, working his way from the beads of moisture gathered at the nape of Terry’s neck, down to his sweat-soaked shoulder blades heaving up and down with his breaths, his ribcage expanding and contracting, further down to two perfect little dimples at the top of his ass, trembling. Finally, watching his own handiwork dribble back at him made Dick feel like he should say something. “Thank you,” was what his brain came up with, leaving Dick to swear internally at his own failure of language.

Terry’s shoulders stiffened, and a sudden pink flush went over the tips of his ears that he could see. For a moment, Dick worried that maybe he’d embarrassed Terry to the point of anger – but then suddenly Terry’s shoulders heaved in the start of a huge, unhinged laugh. “Don’t,” he said, trying to catch his breath between the laughter.

“Sorry,” Dick said, reaching out to place his hand against Terry’s cheek. “I just – you felt so good-”

“Don’t,” Terry said again, only this time it was a groan as his ears went from pink to red. “Let me enjoy this for a moment before you praise me for sex, alright?”

“Sorry,” Dick said again.

Terry sighed and pushed himself off the back of the couch. In his fervor to get away from being fucked too long after coming, he’d leaned on the section of the couch covered in his own cum, and now it was smeared on his ( _perfect_ , Dick’s brain thought) abs. Terry noticed it the same moment Dick did and ran a finger through it. Watching Dick watch him, Terry brought that finger to his lips and closed them around it. Dick’s cock twitched, wondering after a second round.

But that seemed to be the last of Terry’s seductive displays, because after licking his finger clean, Terry hefted a great sigh and his entire body relaxed with it. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” Terry murmured, his voice coming back to his usual, slightly snarky tone. “I swear it’s not usually like this. I don’t have a problem controlling it, it’s just…”

 _Adorable_. He moved a hand to touch Terry’s cheek, just below the same eye Dick had lost, waiting.

Terry shifted uncomfortably, leaning into the touch but looking the opposite way. “I waited a long time.”

“For what? For me?” Dick asked, genuinely surprised.

“You don’t make it easy,” Terry protested, chancing a look in Dick’s direction. “You could wear a shirt for trapeze lessons, you know.”

Dick felt laughter threaten to burst out, but he settled it with a smile. “Sorry.”

“I’ve had to – it got so bad – I had to in the Batmobile. Once."

This time the laughter barked out of Dick without warning, and once it was out it wouldn’t stop coming. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed this hard (the last time he’d seen Wally, maybe?), and it felt like with each shake of laughter some weight in him got a little lighter. Terry made a sour face but his eyes betrayed his smile, and he kicked Dick playfully in the ribs.

When he could finally regain control of his diaphragm, Dick grinned and said, “You know, Bruce can probably see that?”

“Yeah, the thought of that tried to kill my boner, but in the end the image of you toweling down still won out.”

Dick smiled crookedly. Now that Terry’s libido had been satisfied, he looked how any other college kid his age should look. Happy. Carefree. Unburdened. Dick forced disinterest into his tone as he asked, “Were you in the suit?”

Terry raised an eyebrow at that. “Maybe. Why? That turn you on?”

“I wouldn’t complain if you wanted to wear it next time,” Dick answered, still keeping up the charade of nonchalance, then giving it up with a wide smile when Terry’s eyes met his.

Terry grinned and sat up, hooking a hand onto the top of Dick’s shoulder and rested his chin there. “Oh, you’re so sure there’s going to be a next time?”

Dick leaned in and pressed his lips against Terry’s forehead tenderly, reveling in the taste of salt and the smell of his hair. He could feel Terry tense under that gentle gesture. Terry was fine with sex with bravado and flair, reveled in it, showmanship and cockiness made up the realm of his comfort zone. But this – the vulnerable, messy, emotional stuff seemed harder for him. But that was okay. It had been hard for Dick, too. They could work on it together.

Dick closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of him. Terry was fine. Terry was here. Dick had him now, and come hell or high water, he wouldn’t let him go.

“I can only hope,” Dick said gently, his lips still pressed against Terry’s skin.

**Author's Note:**

> So I got really hung up on certain details (like the names of flying trapeze tricks and how they work, I apologize if it's all totally inaccurate) and trying to logic my way through the progression of the story, but there's some incongruities that kind of don't make sense and I hope they didn't bother you too much. During revision I realized that Terry has pretty much constant access to Dick’s loft so his getting in wouldn't be a problem, but the early banter was something I wrote when I first started this, and I liked it too much to get rid of it so I’m sorry! I also got REALLY hung up on just how the hell the Batman Beyond suit even works. Like, Terry pulls it out from his backpack with it all folded up all the time, but it is also full of electronics and can be rigid and is supposed to be kind of bulletproof?! I liked the idea of the cowl in the Arkham games kind of hissing and coming apart as plating, so I tried to employ some of that logic here because if I had to write in a zipper on the batsuit, that would have bothered me FOREVER.
> 
> Oh, there are also some allusions here to the story Kyle Higgins wrote for how Dick and Babs’ relationship from the Phantasm arc, and it took 100% of my effort to not write in more Wally mentions (Dick/Wally bffs/sometimes lovers forever). I'll also be honest and admit I can't remember if DCAU Dick Grayson likes cornflake cereal but that made the cut because... reasons? Also Terry is kind of unhinged here, sorry! I was writing it with the intention that it was leftover angst from 10,000 Clowns and from the Phantasm plot, but maybe I made him a little toooo damaged? Sorry!
> 
> Anyway, I really miss Batman Beyond 2.0, and I hope you enjoyed revisiting it with me.


End file.
